December 9, 2014

Reality suffers from Islamophobia because that’s the only way Islam is both a religion of peace and the koran is the perfect word of god. By reality offering us compelling evidence that this duo is in practice incompatible means that reality is the problem and this is because it suffers from Islamophobia. Muslims have to face this reality and choose one or the other. It’s just that simple.

Sure, many muslims will continue to delude themselves with a lovely bit of circular thinking, namely, thatbecause Islam is a religion of peace, any violence done in its name is not true Islam, and so criticisms of the scripture that offers directed divine support for violence – the perfect word of god, don’t forget – is not representative of the correct meaning of the scripture.

Well, it’s a mystery. It couldn’t possibly be due to his Islamic beliefs derived from the scripture of the koran, now could it? We are told repeatedly by ‘experts’ that doing what he’s doing – using scripture from the koran to justify violence done in its name – is a mysterious exercise of some kind of nefarious ‘radicalization’ process obviously divorced from the religion itself (ie ‘radicalization’ meaning the effects that may occur when someone points out this call to violence contained in scripture to someone who accepts that it is the perfect word of god. Experts agree that the real problem comes from the guy talking and not the guy listening and most definitely not because of the scripture saying what it says. No, no, no… ).

How is this divorce between scriptural calls for violence and violence done in its name made clear to the rest of us who mistakenly think Islamic violence is somehow connected to Islam?

Well, first we must assume that the scripture couldn’t possibly mean what it says because Islam has to be a religion of peace because it truly is a religion of peace, you see… sort of like the Shriners of the religious world. Mind you, that there are no Shriners calling for the killing of non Shriners – funny that – but this lack of ‘radicalization’ in the Shriners ranks is in all likelihood another great mystery to these same self-described ‘experts’. So many mysteries.

Secondly, we must assume that those who do believe this scripture calls for certain actions to be undertaken in its name has been interpreted correctly if and only if these actions are not violent… as if working hard in community service and charity downplays the very real tendency towards taking over political governance and imposing sharia law in place of democratic jurisprudence, which is more like a bloodless change in business management and administrative policy… business (almost) as usual, you see….

Thirdly, as any ‘good’ muslim knows, any violent actions done in the name of Islam cannot be true Islam. This is just a fact, you see. The koran really is the perfect word of god… except where it makes calls for violence, in which case it must be reinterpreted to mean something other than what it says. The perfection is still present and non violent, of course, because true Islam is a religion of peace; it just has to be interpreted correctly. Those who become ‘radicalized’ have failed to interpret the perfect word correctly and have taken it at face value… which advocates for violence that cannot possibly be associated with true Islam because true Islam is a religion of peace…. as every good (ie not ‘radicalized’) muslim knows. Sure, much koranic scripture is to be taken at face value as god intended and not interpreted by ‘radical’ reformers – radical because they presume they have some right to interpret god’s most perfect word in areas like gender differences and roles and so on – but taking scripture at face value in call for violence is the opposite, you see. In this case, taking scripture at face value is what’s radical because true Islam is a religion of peace.

Fourthly, anyone who criticizes this whack-a-mole notion that the koran itself as not being the perfect word of god (this bit of the koran perfect by its literal directive, this bit perfect by interpretive direction, you see, so the whole remains quite perfect and reasonably so) is by definition racist and anIslamophobe. They are the worst kind of people because they are intolerant of muslims for really bad reasons that have no basis in fact. These radicals just don’t understand why true Islam is the religion of peace and made so by submitting to the fact that the koran is perfect word of god in spite of overwhelming evidence reality offers us to the contrary. Because reality itself demonstrates that Islam is not a religion of peace when followed by those willing to submit to its literal understanding of scripture, reality is at fault because the koran is the perfect word of god AND true Islam is a religion of peace.

Pretending that there’s nothing inherently dysfunctional and violent about believing the koran somehow contains the perfect word of god and that word is peaceful is to deny reality. And that reality is that the source scripture called the koran continues to be used as a divine source to justify violence done in its name. How so many of the ‘experts’ addressing the problem of violence done in the name of Islam continue to miss this hard-to-miss connection I think is the only truly Great Mystery at work here.

November 4, 2014

On October 22, 2014, a recent covert to Islam decided to heed the call from ISIS to kill some people who represented the country of Canada in the name of bringing honour to Allah. Here’s the story from Wikipedia:

A series of shootings occurred on October 22, 2014, at Parliament Hill and nearby in Ottawa, Canada. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial guard duty at the Canadian National War Memorial. He then launched an attack in the nearby Centre Block parliament building, where members of the Parliament of Canada were attending caucuses. Zehaf-Bibeau was killed inside the building in a gunfight with parliament security personnel. Following the shootings, the downtown core of Ottawa was placed on lockdown while police searched for any potential additional threats.

The shootings took place two days after an attack on military personnel in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, which also killed a Canadian soldier. Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper said both of these attacks serve as a “grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.”

Yes these attacks were a reminder that we are a part of the world. But these attacks allowed Canadians to demonstrate to the rest of the world what secular values of nationhood mean in action:

This is a typical overpass of a four lane divided highway running along a populated corridor between Windsor, Ontario and Quebec City in Canada. The Corporal body was driven from where he was killed in Ottawa to his home town of Hamilton. The journey along this section of highway is about 350 Km and has about 50 overpasses. When Corporal Cirillo’s body was repatriated to his home town, this was a typical image that greeted the small convoy.

The point is that our national anthem includes the words “We stand on guard for thee.’ Cirillo was ceremonially doing exactly that at the National War Memorial when he was shot and killed… not for who he was but for what he represented, what he was defending. That cannot be killed. It can, however, be a value reinvigorated in our hearts and minds. And this is exactly what such attacks do. They remind all of us -again – what it is that is worth defending: the rights and freedoms all of us share. What you’re seeing in this picture is the average Canadian and local municipal forces repaying that same debt all of us share and taking our turn… to stand on guard for him.

In case one might be tempted to see this event as some kind of media circus, let me assure you that it happened spontaneously. Across the country the same sentiment was expressed time and again at every local cenotaph. Poppies appeared. Hand written notes were left. Flowers set out by the anonymous. Even 3500 Km away in the recesses of the mountains of British Columbia, we find the same sentiment on display:

This is what it means to be Canadian – different in all ways imaginable yet each a part of the whole by what we share: our values of freedom, equality rights, and the dignity of personhood that resides within the living heart of each person who wears a uniform. And even though the military brass was quick to order our men and women out of uniform to avoid being targets, I saw a common and spontaneous response to that: hundreds of local cadets and retired military people don their uniforms in the following days not just to make a statement of support but remind the military itself that we are not separate groups and organizations and institutions … but one people who share in the active defense of our values. This is the lesson from a terrorist attack and one that more terrorists themselves should heed because since our inception, Canada has been and shall remain a warrior nation first and a peacekeeper only second. We really do stand on guard for thee.

The music is irritating but the video reveals what I’ve been saying forever: the koran itself – and not a ‘few bad apples’ who mistakenly take its teachings too seriously – is incompatible with Western liberal secular values. Pointing out this fact does not make one a racist or an islamaphobe. It makes one a realist who is awake and aware.

Sam Harris makes a very good comment on it here as does Jerry Coyne here.

I’ve come across this trope so many times that I realize people are actually falling for it… people (I presumed) who have great difficulty comprehending the written word. After all, I know that even in my country of Canada with its high standing in comparative public education achievements, nearly a third of the population is functionally illiterate. So it’s no surprise to find those who suffer from this unnecessary problem may have difficulty grasping the well written explanations describing why it’s a good thing to criticize ideas and doctrines that have profoundly negative effects in the public domain. And it requires a similar kind of illiteracy to fall for this lie that islamaphobia – an irrational fear of islam – is driven by racist motives rather than good reasons based on compelling evidence.

As if this willful blindness to the very real danger to our secular principles islam contains isn’t bad enough, these people who criticize us – those who have the bad manners to point out why islam requires robust and public critcism – fail to see the obvious: what is truly disturbing is how easily this blindness, this abject stupidity to blame the messenger for the message, morphs into support for the trope that any and all criticism of the doctrine that empowers islam to be so dangerous in reality is really racism in action.

What is remarkable is that this blatant lie is so easily embraced by those who can read, who can comprehend the written word, who can understand why this misrepresentation and misapplication of what the criticism is all about matters. And to add insult to injury, those who promote and extend this dangerous trope seem to suffer no qualms to attribute the real danger to be those of us who have the moral fortitude and intellectual integrity to point out why the doctrine of islam in particular is so dangerous to us all by standing contrary to the foundational principles that support the liberal secular democracies we have inherited, namely, the New Atheists.

The doctrine of islam is the teachings of koran. If you ask any muslim a specific, straight forward question like this, “Do you believe the koran is the perfect word of god?” be prepared for the fundamentalist answer: “Yes.” This answer does not come only from some fringe element, some extreme radical group of the religion, but the mainstream, from the average muslim. If pressed about what constitutes the difference between a good muslim and a poor one, you will find out from the muslim that how closely the koran is followed determines this status. Why we delude ourselves to think that there will be some maturation of this mainstream fundamentalist thinking with exposure to western secular values is simply as mystifying as it is foolish and dangerous. (The latest evidence is from a trio of high school graduates – who classmates describe as normal and nice and typical – from London, ON who converted to islam, and then participated in mass murder in an attack on gas workers in Algeria.) The motivating factor for this travesty of misdirected young lives was islam. It was not New Atheists!

Those muslims who speak publicly about the evolution of the religion from its violent origins to become what it is not, namely, a tolerant, moderate, living doctrine that respects the rights and freedoms of its members similar to liberalized christianity and judaism, are not speaking on behalf of the religion as good muslims and they know it. The listener – eager to show common cause in the name of secular values like tolerance and respect for the beliefs of others – is ripe for the picking. Such muslims who speak publicly about islam, as if it were an equivalently tolerant religion to those who wish it were, are not moderate muslims at all and do not represent the majority: they are poor muslims by definition… unless they are lying to your face in order to promote by stealth the advancement of islam and shari’a into the public domain. This technique is called taqiyya (for anyone unaware of its religious approval) and it describes why and on what koranic authority this intentional deceit (that fools well meaning but gullible people in secular democracies) is the right thing to do for a good muslim!

At the end of the day, the point of the doctrine of islam is to live a godly life, and by faith this means living under god’s law, which is not compatible with either the secular principles of tolerance and respect showered on its adherents in the West. This law is shari’a and it is incompatible in authority with your individual rights of autonomy, your individual freedoms for legal equality, your secular principles of tolerating and accommodating religious differences, your allegiance to your nation. Shari’a is incompatible with the foundational principles of western liberal secular democracies. These are the facts and not some imaginary racist assertions meant to to slander.

But don’t take my word for. Find out for yourself (first by reading and then by asking real muslims) why claims about the peacefulness of the religion of islam are not true in practice by good muslims. Ask about their interpretation about the verse of the sword, the one used to overturn all the previous koranic claims about promoting peace and love, when defending the faith (or watch a short video about it here). Find out for yourself why islam and shari’a are not like the doctrines of any other liberalized religion but stand firmly against any social advancement past the seventh century morality that has been encoded in the koran. Check out ongoing violence done in the name of islam and ask yourself how and why this is any different from other religions. In other words, stop pretending that tolerating and respecting freedom of religion means that it is only right and proper for you to respect islam. By doing so, you are threatening the very values of tolerance and respect you are self-righteously exercising!

Now that we have compelling evidence from reality that the doctrine of islam is incompatible with western secular values, how much sense does it make – and who does it serve – to vilify New Atheists for talking about this compelling evidence in the public domain?

You guessed it: it serves only to grant more cover for stealth jihad. How can any literate person who supports western secular values be so stupid as to be intolerant of much needed criticism towards the doctrine of islam? Well, I think there are four possibilities: illiterate, ignorant, delusional, complacent, or complicit.

For those who are illiterate, get help.

For those who are ignorant, open your mind and eyes and ears and learn.

For those who are delusional, respect reality. Recognize that your beliefs – especially religious beliefs – do not create reality but require adjudication by it if you wish to have them respected.

For those who are complacent, who wish that these inherent conflicts between faith-based beliefs and our valued principles would just go away, wake up. Recognize the danger and join in the criticism or get out the way.

For those who are complicit, who try to lay the blame for islamic intolerance on some fringe element of it rather than the doctrine that empowers the whole, who will not think for themselves but go along with the charade that islam is a religion of peace and tolerance in spite of compelling evidence to the contrary, who will not see the danger to themselves – to their own legal welfare and that of their neighbours – or others, who allow their complicity to enable the advancement of islam and shari’a unimpeded by legitimate criticism, know that you are exposed for the ethical hypocrites and moral cowards you are.

As a shining example of what it is we face as New Atheists in this battle to get more of us to respect reality rather than faith-based beliefs about it, consider this exchange between one the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, Sam Harris, and the usually reasonable columnist Glenn Greenwald. I have extracted Sam’s final reply and added the bold for emphasis:

The idea that “new atheism” is a cover for a racist hatred of Muslims is ridiculous (and, again, crudely defamatory). I have written an entire book attacking Christianity. And do you know what happens when I or any of my “new atheist” colleagues criticize Christians for their irrational beliefs? They say, “Of course, you feel free to attack us, but you would never have the courage to criticize Islam.” As you can see, our Christian critics follow our work about as well as you do.

Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls.

And for the money quote:

There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it.

September 2, 2011

Maryam Namazie explains how sharia law enables anti-human theology to infect the public domain to practical effect and why islamicists are such a direct threat to the enlightenment values – through a willingness to engage in intimidation and violence against those who support and exercise them – upon which tolerant western secular democracies have been built.

August 24, 2011

Author Paris Dipersico has been discharged from Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital after he was dragged into a forest and beaten unconscious by two male assailants Wednesday morning. Police said the victim’s hands were bound and Det. Sgt. Anthony Odoardi said they are confident the attack was targeted due to the controversial nature of his book Wake Up Call.

Co-author Gabrielle Dipersico’s home was broken into just a day after the assault and they have received death threats by Muslim extremists for insulting Islam. The Police are currently conducting an investigation along with a safety plan for the authors.

Wake Up Call has angered several religious groups, family members and it was rejected by over a dozen publishers for being “extremely controversial” and “inflammatory.”

I thought it worth noting the author’s description of the book’s main character: “Although being brought up in a Muslim household, yet he questions the very existence of God and says: “Islam is a religion of ‘peace’ and Muslims will kill you to prove it.”

But so what? Whether the author’s views are politically correct or insane, what matters is that these threats are carried over into real world violence. And the motivation is islamic religious piety trying to police the rights and freedoms of others through intimidation and violence. This reveals why, at their core, islam and enlightenment values are in direct conflict. People need to choose which side they are on.

March 10, 2011

It started off with such promise, but the revolution in Egypt will fail because the right to political and social equality for half of the population is held in contempt by the vast majority of its populace. The archaic anti-enlightenment belief directly supported by islam that women do not and should not have the same political and social rights as men has not been overthrown.

A demonstration on International Women’s Day by 300 women advocating for equality reveals this truth. The group was attacked and broken up by a much larger group of men who reportedly groped and beat and chased these women from Tahrir Square. But this depressing result should not be surprising. PEW polling data reveals the scope and breadth of beliefs held by the vast majority of Egyptians that stand diametrically opposed to establishing political and social equality for women. And without equality in law for all citizens, the revolution is simply a period of time between being ruled by different strongmen.

August 28, 2010

Excellent article by Edmund Standing over at Butterflies & Wheels well worth the reading in its entirety from which I have taken these excerpts:

Claim 1: If an atheist reads a religion’s ‘holy book’ and find it to be full of vile, ignorant, and divisive material, the atheist is being unsophisticated in his or her approach. The atheist is ‘siding with the fundamentalists’ and consequently is not worth listening to.

Claim 2: If an atheist is to understand a ‘holy book’, they cannot simply read it, but must instead read it through liberal theological interpretive frameworks, and must understand that the ‘true message’ of the ‘holy book’ is something that emerges through the reflection of generations of interpretive communities, not through the plain and clear words that are actually printed on the page.

Neither of these arguments holds water, and are no more impressive when put forward by liberal Muslim apologists than when put forward by liberal Archbishops. These ‘arguments’, in Islam and in Christianity, are fundamentally intellectually dishonest and can only be the result of massive self-deception on the part of their proponents. There is really no case to answer, but I shall quickly knock down these claims again:

Response to Claim 1:

There is no logical reason why a supposed ‘holy book’ should not be taken at face value. This is especially the case in Islam, given a central belief in Islam is the claim that the Qur’an is a perfect, divinely authored text. This is not simply a ‘fundamentalist’ belief, but rather a mainstream belief. In fact, given the centrality of this belief, the use of the term ‘fundamentalist’ in regard to Islam is more problematic than with Judaism and Christianity because, as Sam Harris notes, ‘most Muslims appear to be “fundamentalist” in the Western sense of the word’. That is not to say that most Muslims are violent extremists, but that most at least pay lip service to the idea that they intrinsically view the nature of the Qur’an itself in exactly the same way as the extremists do.

Response to Claim 2:

The idea that ‘scholars’ who present Islam as dividing the world into believers and unbelievers and believe that Islam is supreme amongst religions have somehow ‘misinterpreted’ their faith is farcical, for throughout the Qur’an this is precisely the worldview that emerges. When religious liberals sugarcoat the clear meaning of their religious texts by claiming that we should not look directly at the text but rather at the writings of liberal ‘interpreters’ of the text, they are not basing their argument on anything approaching a logically coherent position, but rather on wishful thinking and self-deception, and they offer no firm, objective criteria by which such ‘interpretation’ can be seen as authentic.

Why attack moderates?

During the debates over religion that occurred during the Enlightenment, which were often framed in extremely harsh language, it was not violent extremists under attack, but the very notion of God, supernatural authority, and so on. The result of those debates ultimately was that religion in Europe took a beating and no longer represents any sort of threat to liberal democracy. Likewise, religious arguments in the political sphere are longer accepted on ‘divine’ authority, but must be articulated in such a way that they make sense in a secular context. While Muslim moderates are doing – or trying to do – good work in hindering extremism, they must also accept that the Enlightenment critique also applies to their beliefs, and that in the adult world people have every right to make criticisms, even of liberal religion, that may appear ‘nasty’ on first reading. If liberal Muslims are willing to trample on the beliefs of their less moderate co-religionists, then they must also be prepared to have their beliefs trampled on as well. No-one would consider that their personal political views should be exempt from criticism just because they are non-violent political views, and it would be an absurd and worrying precedent to be set were that the case. Religion is no different. Despite the fact that religious people seem to have a lot emotionally invested in their ‘faith’, the fact remains that religion, just like politics, is an ideology, and as such it is a perfectly legitimate target for criticism and debate, even if it is liberal and moderate in its nature.

There is one further point about moderates which has been well articulated by Sam Harris. It’s an argument worth considering. In the short run, pragmatically speaking, moderates appear to be a good thing, but their continued identification with a belief system that is extremely open to far less liberal interpretations may actually perpetuate the survival of its more irrational and beligerent forms. While moderate Muslims can criticise Islamism and offer alternative ‘interpretations’ of the Qur’an, they still maintain in doing so that the Qur’an does have some kind of authority.

Ultimately, Islam and the Qur’an do not pose problems because of ‘misinterpretation’, but rather because they belong to a world far from modernity and are actually of no relevance to modernity. Atheists have every right to point this out, even if it means criticising those who are nonetheless doing good work against extremism. Moderate Islam and moderate Quran’ic ‘interpretation’ offer no real bulwark against those who read the text of the Qur’an and take it at face value, as a perfect and divinely authored text. Only by acknowledging that any notion of a divinely authored book is simply false, by accepting the harsh reality that this book is in fact useless (and indeed dangerous) in the modern context, and by embracing human reason and freethinking will the curse of Islamic extremism ultimately be overcome.

August 26, 2010

Three Ontario men accused of taking part in a domestic terrorist plot and possessing plans and materials to create makeshift bombs had allegedly selected specific targets in Canada, sources told CBC News.

It is not yet known what the alleged targets were, but sources told CBC News that none of them was in the United States.

The RCMP investigation, dubbed Project Samosa, found evidence that one member of the group had been trained to construct electronic and explosive devices.

During their investigation, Therriault said, police seized more than 50 electronic circuit boards they say were designed specifically to remotely detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

He said they also seized a vast quantity of terrorist literature, videos and manuals.

“This group posed a real and serious threat to the citizens of the National Capital Region and Canada’s national security,” he said.

Unless and until we face up to the fact that islam itself is the root cause of much terrorism in the world today, we will not face reality.

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Questionable Motives is a site dedicated to raising important questions in the never-ending battle between rationality and superstition, offering commentary about topical issues, and addressing which of these motivations is truly being served.